


tucked behind the ear, ambrosia

by unchartedandunknown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Post-Time Skip, Underage Drinking, buckle up I’m about to clown, yes this is a companion fic to the first one so you need to read that first unfortunately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:42:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchartedandunknown/pseuds/unchartedandunknown
Summary: The five times Linhardt falls asleep around Byleth and the one time he wakes up first.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 14
Kudos: 115





	tucked behind the ear, ambrosia

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first 5+1 idea I had that I didn’t follow through with originally bc my friend is big brain and offered me some of their own 5+1s (thank you). Then I realized I forgot to add One minute detail with my other fic so I wrote another one to add it in.

i.

“What made you come back?”

Byleth fingers his cup of chamomile tea, watching from the corner of his eye as Linhardt takes a sip of his own tea (angelica, as always).

It must be strange for him, seeing his professor after five years and looking as if he hasn’t aged a day. Probably because he hasn’t aged. Not over those five years, at least.

(The fall should have shattered him. No matter how many enemies he can fight, how many times he stubbornly stood his ground and got up again, he should’ve died that day, just another unidentified, blood-crusted body found on the edge of a river.

Instead he fell into a long, deep slumber as his body and magic tried to achieve the impossible.)

“To the monastery?” Linhardt doesn’t need Byleth’s nod to know that’s what he meant with his question. He’s deep in thought, so much so that he doesn’t notice Byleth’s eyes follow the distracted movement of his hand as he brushes a stray strand of hair falling over his face. The sun strikes soft on his face, illuminating the pensive look in his eyes, the tiniest wrinkle of his nose, a familiar expression Byleth has seen before, but on a younger face.

It’s been so long, but for Byleth no time has passed at all.

So why does he feel so bittersweet?

Times have changed. People change. But Byleth remains the same.

Something about that frustrates him. Is he doomed to remain stagnant as the people around him continue onward with the flow of time?

“I suppose there was Claude’s promise to meet again, five years later. But that wouldn’t be my reason,” Linhardt mutters to himself. “Really, I think it was Caspar’s nagging that did it. We didn’t think the place would be overrun by bandits when we arrived.”

Byleth can imagine Caspar leaning onto Linhardt, complaining as the other young man flipped a page in his book, trying not to listen. The thought makes him fond. Some things don’t change with time.

Still, it doesn’t feel as though Linhardt has given him a full answer, even as he stretches and, through a yawn says, “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll be taking a short nap. It _is_ only afternoon, after all...”

He settles himself quite quickly, head in arms, tea pushed out of the way to make space for himself. He’s already dozing, Byleth finds when he leans closer. A strand of hair flutters, fallen loose from his bun. A periwinkle butterfly flaps uncertainly, landing on his nose but moving when Linhardt grumbles, only to land in his hair, where it stretches its wings, moving but not flying.

Byleth doesn’t know what to do with the sight before him. Something in him is too scared to drink in this moment, a part of him from five years ago.

He looks away.

  
  
  
  
  
  


ii.

Byleth can fight a group of bandits barehanded. He’s been thrown into the great void of nothingness and sliced his way out, and he’s survived an over hundred feet cliff fall.

But being in the rain for five minutes? _I’ve had it up to_ here _with you,_ his exhausted body declares, before giving out overnight.

This is how Byleth finds himself in bed the next morning, feverish.

“Have you ever had a fever before, teach?” Claude asks. He looks amused enough that Byleth would tell him to leave if his body weren’t so unresponsive.

He thinks he’s been sick before, at least once. He remembers, through his blurred vision, the wooden ceiling of a house. A hand running through his hair, large and calloused and scarred; a deep, reassuring voice.

_Father._

He tries to force words through the heavy fog in his mind, dry lips opening to sayー

A raspy noise escapes from his throat.

In the embarrassing silence, Claude struggles to hold in his laughter. Byleth sighs internally, and resigns himself to the fact that his life is now in the hands of his student.

“Don’t worry, teach. I’ll get some people to come by throughout the day to babysit you. We can’t have our professor falling ill before battle, after all.”

Lorenz is the first person assigned to the task of caring for Byleth, apparently. He comes bearing tea and honey, though he’s always been disgusted ever since he’s discovered that Byleth always drops a spoonful into his tea. He claims that honey with warm water is good for sore throats and “will have to concede to him drinking this monstrosity” just this one time. Byleth never was good at conversation, but bedridden he’s predictably worse. Lorenz ends up talking to himself about politics and the approaching battle, as much as Byleth nods and tries to keep up.

Hilda flounces in minutes after Lorenz leaves. “I simply couldn’t force myself to be in class when I knew you were in such a state, professor,” she says. It would be much more convincing if she weren’t smiling sickly sweet and in that tone of voice. Still, he appreciates it.

Halfway through the hour she leaves, leaving Byleth to wonder if she went back to class (doubtful), but she returns with a basket of flowers. He wonders if it’s for his funeral. If he could talk right now, he would ask.

Instead Hilda picks two up and weaves them together. Byleth watches through a haze as she adds a flower, then another, until he realizes she’s made a flower crown.

She leaves the crown on his desk, for him “to wear later.” He’s not sure if he will.

Marianne is the next assigned to the task, mercifully so (no offence to the first two). She makes sure Byleth’s blankets are properly covering him, and places a warm towel on his head. This is all well and good, but midway through the hour she somehow slips into the baby voice she uses when talking to animals. Byleth isn’t sure what to make of it. In his state he can’t stop her, anyway. It’s comforting, in a strange way.

Caspar drops in at lunch, sheepish and apologetic.

“You probably got sick because you gave us our coat,” he says. “So, thank you. Dorothea and Linhardt said thanks, too. And we hope you get better soon.” The door closes, and Byleth thinks that is all, until Caspar’s head pops in again. “Also! Linhardt is dropping off your coat tonight.”

His stomach drops. He doesn’t want to see Linhardt, not in this state.

His face must show his displeasure, because Leonie frowns back at him. “I know you probably don’t wanna eat right now, professor, but this soup will help you feel better.”

He wants to tell her that the soup is fine, but his tongue is wooden in his mouth. He nods instead, opening his mouth to take another mouthful.

The day starts to blur itself together in a muddle of unbearable heat that leaves his hair wet and clothes feeling sticky. It falls one upon the other like a blow to the body; Hilda’s fingers weaving intently, Raphael’s booming laugh. Mercedes’s cool fingers touching his forehead, Bernadetta peering behind her. Felix and Lysithea’s faces swim before him. For some reason, Felix is holding a slice of cake. Byleth can’t eat cake right now. He wants to tell him that, tries to.

There’s a voice worming its way through Byleth’s mind, high and proper, sweet as a nightingale. Dorothea. That’s Dorothea’s voice saying, “It’s like taking care of a child...do you think this is his first time ill?”

Claude’s voice, reluctant. “I don’t know. He was fine this morning.”

He closes his eyes. Or, no, they were already closed. When did he close them?

“I hope he gets better soon.”

Sleep sounds like a sound option right now. It is the only option, in his state. Byleth sinks into it, like warm water in a bath.

  
  
  


There’s the sound of water falling into a bucket. The sound echoes in the room, and all Byleth can hear is his own breathing.

A cold hand brushes the hair on his forehead back. Byleth wants to lean into the cold, but his body doesn’t respond.

The cold hand is replaced by a warm towel, and Byleth wants to whine. But the hand moves, only to rest on his wrist and he feels still, stiller than death could ever hope to leave him.

(The blood pumps through his veins, circulating.

It never cycles through his heart. It doesn’t need to, not anymore.)

Through his squinted eyes, all he sees is a blur of deep forest green.

“Don’t force yourself, professor.”

Why was that voice so familiar? Byleth struggles to remember, but all he can recall is green.

Sleep drags him unwillingly back into its depths.

  
  
  


Byleth wakes with a head that feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton and a dry mouth.

And surrounded on all sides by...He presses on one of them experimentally. Pillows?

Weakly, he pushes on one of them, watching it tilt and fall. He gets a mouthful of pillow when the structure collapses on him.

This is it, this is how he dies. He’s gone his whole life fighting and killing and this is how it ends. Smothered by a pillow. Maybe Hilda can repurpose those flowers for his funeral.

“Professor?!”

Or not.

The pillow is lifted and Byleth finds that he can breathe again, only for his breath to be taken away by the heavenly face that greets him; green hair tumbling from his shoulders in a way that reminds Byleth of sprawling hills before the forest his father used to train him in and blue eyes that would upset the sky itself if the sky had feelings.

Linhardt frowns. “Professor?”

“Water,” he rasps, to both of their surprise. He didn’t think he could talk.

Linhardt helps Byleth sit up. With a careful hand to his back that makes Byleth want to tear away like it’s on fire and the other on a cup of water, he lifts the glass gently up to Byleth’s lips. The cold is refreshing and helps clear out the dryness that had taken over his throat.

“You’ve been sick for two days,” Linhardt tells him, which leaves him numb for a few seconds before he shakes it off. It’s okay. There are other people here who can teach his students; they were fine without him.

His lidded eyes land on his coat, hanging on the back of his chair. On the desk behind it is a pile of flower crowns, in varying states of decay and colours.

Linhardt follows his gaze. “Hilda volunteered to take the most shifts.”

That’s what he expected from her. Byleth would nod, but moving feels like trying to fight through a sea current, and he doesn’t want a headache forming.

Linhardt helps Byleth lay back down, reacquainting himself with the familiar sight of his ceiling.

“I apologize about the pillows,” Linhardt says. “I don’t usually get sick, but Caspar did once, and we occupied ourselves by building pillow forts since he was feeling restless stuck inside.” He stacks the pillows at the foot of Byleth’s bed. The concentration on his face, the way he silently switches the pillows if one is larger than the other or places the ones that are the same colour in a row is incredibly endearing. In his fever-broken state, he thinks of the purse of Linhardt’s mouth, his hair a mess from how many times he’s run a hand through it with long fingers that Byleth has seen flip through pages at a steady pace.

And if Sothis could hear this now, she would be gagging and digging her own grave to lay in because his thoughts are so miserably intimate it’s sickening and she would have grown tired after hearing two sentences of what he calls a “thought process” worming through his mind and consequently into hers.

Byleth forces his eyes to close on the image of Linhardt sitting down in the chair brought beside his bed, reaching for a book. He decidedly does not think of Linhardt running a hand through his hair, or resting it lightly on his wrist, soft as the brush of a cat’s tail.

The next time he opens his eyes it’s to see Linhardt sprawled on the edge of his bed, asleep on the book he had been reading. That can’t be comfortable, Byleth decides, but doesn’t make a move to wake him.

But he doesn’t reach out, either.

  
  
  
  
  
  


iii.

In the dark, the light of the campfire is the only thing that illuminates their faces. Dorothea’s leading them in a song, swaying from side to side with her arms around Caspar and Raphael on either side of her as they sing as full volume. Beside Caspar, Ignatz mumbles along, a small smile on his face.

On a different log, Bernadetta and Mercedes roast marshmallows. Hilda stuffs several into her mouth. Felix cooks meat slowly over the fire, unaware of Ashe creeping behind him.

When Byleth looks down at his drink, his reflection changes: eyes dark in their resolution, the future of a nation heavy on his shoulders, face stained with blood that wasn’t his.

_(“I wanted...to walk with youー”)_

Claude takes a seat beside him on the log with a heavy sigh. Byleth can only imagine how he feels right now, to think victory was in his grasp onto to discover another group that can potentially ruin what they can create before they’ve even started.

“I would tell them that we can leave the partying for later, but with our current victory, I think they deserve this.” Claude is relaxed, holding a drink in his hands nonchalantly. Byleth knows it’s an act, but which part? He’s never been able to tell entirely, not even with how long they’ve known each other, and he doubts he ever will. “What about you? Can’t have our professor feeling all down and out.”

Mercedes and Flayn are having a contest on who can hold the most marshmallows in their mouth. So far, Flayn is winning.

“I’m fine,” Byleth says, forces himself to say.

“Really?” Claude doesn’t look like he believes him. Byleth isn’t sure if he believes himself. “Because after everything we’ve been through, I wouldn’t be so sure of myself.”

He knows what Claude is trying to tell him. He’s always left the most important things unsaid, his own way of testing Byleth, and Byleth has never stopped him.

_It’s okay if you’re not okay._

Everyone knows he used to be a mercenary before he began working at the monastery. Death was easy to approach. Or maybe it wasn’t, he can’t remember.

The difference between then and now is knowledge. He never knew the people he killed as people; to him, they were just another mark on the battlefield, another body without a face or a name.

But Edelgard was a student. As was Petra, and Hubert, Sylvain...

“Do you regret it?”

Byleth shakes his head. The only thing he regrets is not noticing just how far things had gone south. Not noticing Edelgard and Hubert seemingly disappearing from the monastery the last few weeks he had been there. Failing to convince them, even as he turned back time again and again to try one more time, just _one more timeー_

But fate has a will of its own. He found that out bitterly, with his father’s head cradled in his lap, as he accepted that some things are meant to be, and some just simply _aren’t_.

“I’ll be okay,” Byleth says.

Claude smiles at his honesty. “That’s good.” He stands, dusting his pants. “I’m gonna turn in early tonight. Plenty of planning to get done in the morning.”

“Good night.”

“‘Night, teach.”

Byleth downs the rest of his drink. Festivities continue around him: Flayn nursing a stomachache with Seteth hovering over her shoulder, Dorothea flinging Bernadetta into a spin with more arm strength than he thought she had, Lorenz sharing a cup of tea with Marianne in a corner to themselves.

He finds Linhardt inside his tent, hunched over a book, his back to him.

“That can’t be good for your back,” Byleth says, and Linhardt jumps.

He doesn’t know why he’s here. Claude’s eyes were clearly telling him to talk to someone, and this is what he does.

What no one said about having a goddess in your head: they give good advice, but when they’re gone, you’ll find that you don’t have anyone to turn to.

Byleth has always held his students at a careful arm’s length (“Close enough to comfort, but far enough of a headstart to pull out that sword of yours if need be,” as Sothis would say). Linhardt is no exception; if anything, he’s a hammer to the nail to the rule Byleth has hanging over his head.

(Byleth knows Sothis isn’t technically gone, but it’s not the same, much in the same way the crackling of a campfire cannot compare to the roar of a bonfire, or how a lake cannot compare to an ocean: the difference is far too great.

It is an echo of her that exists now in Byleth, only her powers and nothing more. Yet sometimes he will find himself mirroring her before he can catch himself, the flippant way she waved her hand, a bad joke that comes up with terrible timing that he struggles not to laugh at lest he accidentally offend someone.)

And now he’s here. In Linhardt’s tent. As if to throw all of Sothis’ perfectly good advice out the window or, off a cliff.

But he can remember Linhardt’s hands threading through his hair to comfort, as if he were made of paper, about to crumble and catch fire and burn to ash, and not someone with blood on their hands.

There is something about fear in the battlefield. It always catches him by surprise, through the haze of blood and sweat and the tunnel vision he enters. The icy numbness that spreads through his body through the discordant sounds of swords clashing, the shadow of a pegasus above him.

He has never feared for himself in this war. It’s not because he thinks he’s capable of killing everyone on his own, but more because the thought of his life ending is a much more distant thought than the very real idea of his students dying somewhere on the battlefield without him knowing.

But what runs through him now is a different kind of fear. One that builds slowly over time, grows into a crescendo that crackles like lightning, strikes just as fast, but lingers like the smell of blood under his nails.

(“Sothis, what is it I’m feeling?” Byleth asked once, long ago.

“Don’t you know what love is, silly?” she replied, which made Byleth drop the bucket of fish he was carrying on his foot, to the silent wonder of his students later that day when he limped into class.)

Linhardt looks younger under candlelight, softer in a way that makes Byleth look away. Briefly, he wonders if Linhardt’s hair would feel as silky as it looks, before banishing the thought.

He doesn’t even know he’s turned around to leave until a hand around his wrist stops him.

“I need to talk about something.” Byleth nods mutely, taking a seatーsomewhere. Across from Linhardt, whose hands are still on the pages of the book he’s reading. Byleth can feel eyes on him, insistent in a way that makes him want to turn away. Instead, he remains focused on Linhardt’s hands. His hands that are clean, without blemishes or scars.

(Byleth was not there for Linhardt’s first kill. Caspar was, and when he told Byleth, he didn’t like how pale the boy was, how he said Linhardt shook in Ashe’s arms afterward, mute.

He would do anything to make sure that never happens again.)

Byleth’s own hands are different. He has plenty of callouses from training, numerous scars from battles before he started teaching at the monastery and didn’t have a mage or healer to help him.

Linhardt’s hands show no signs of the struggles of war. It shows in different ways, in the exhausted droop of his shoulders, in the bags under his eyes.

“Do you think I’m useful?” is not what Byleth’s expecting Linhardt to say. “In war.”

Linhardt is an asset to the Golden Deer and the Alliance. Byleth tells him so.

“Why’s that?”

Is it not obvious?

Linhardt is one of their healers. And while Byleth knows he has an aversion to killing, this isn’t something he sees as a drawback.

“Do you think your refusal to kill makes you weak?”

“In war? Yes.” Linhardt crosses his legs. “You can’t afford to be merciful in battle when it can cost your your life, or the lives of your friends or allies.”

He has a point, but there is still something Byleth needs to convince him of.

“Who do you think this war is for?” Byleth says. “When everything is over and done, do you think the world will care about soldiers or their weapons? Or will they look for change?

“Claude wants to create a better Fódlan. When that time comesー” And it will, because trying to stop Claude is like trying to stop the changing seasons: you might as well sit back and wait for the leaves to wither and fall with the amount your struggling will amount to. “ーthey’ll need people like you, with your research on Crests. Or Ignatz, with his appreciation for art. People who have lives outside of war.”

“You have a life outside of war,” Linhardt says, always able to catch what Byleth’s left unsaid.

His smile feels too tight on his face, like clothes that no longer fit, and the words that fall from his lips sound sour in his ears: “Do I, really?”

Linhardt stares back at him. “Is this how you see yourself?”

“How do you see me?”

“How do Iー” Linhardt rocks back, hands supporting his weight from behind. “When we first met, I introduced myself as, ‘Linhardt. Goodbye’, and you somehow didn’t take offence.”

“I thought you were just trying to be straightforward.”

“You once walked into class with your watering can and a bag of rice over your shoulder because you forgot to deliver the rice to the cooks and leave your watering can in the greenhouse.”

“I can be forgetful.”

“And you can’t sing. I’ve heard you try, and it’s awful. It makes Lorenz sound like an angel.”

“Iー” Byleth sighs. “What are you trying to get at?”

“That you have hobbies just like the rest of us. Bernadetta enjoys writingーbut don’t tell her I told you that. Hilda likes making perfumes and jewelry. And you like fishing and gardening, among other things.”

“And what would all of these hobbies make me?”

Linhardt’s eyes glimmer. Byleth thinks of the blue morning fog that settles over the monastery just before dawn, forgiving in a way the rest of the world could not be. “What makes everyone else outside of their roles in this war: human.”

The breath leaves Byleth in a shaky sigh. Linhardt’s smile is just as shaky but brighter still, rivalling the stars in their gentle shine, and Byleth has to look away, cannot imagine bearing the brunt of it for more than a few mere seconds. It should be embarrassing, the state Linhardt leaves him in, but it just makes him pleasantly warm, like waking under warm covers in a cold room.

“When did you get so wise?” Byleth murmurs, and Linhardt laughs.

“Didn’t I come to _you_ for reassurance?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I’m...” Linhardt yawns. “Already feeling tired anyway.”

“I can go, then.”

“...No,” Linhardt says decidedly, slipping into his sleeping bag. He ties the ribbon used to keep his hair up around his wrist. “Just keep talking to me.”

It’s an unusual request for him to make; it’s not like he’s ever had trouble falling asleep. But Byleth humours him (and himself) by settling beside Linhardt. He doesn’t normally talk to himself, rarely uses his words, but he tries for Linhardt.

The words come haltingly at first: he settles on the last meal he had before they left, then the recent plants he’s been caring for in the greenhouse, things that are familiar.

It doesn’t take long for him to look down and find Linhardt asleep, chest rising and falling. His face looks different asleep, like how a rock in a river is smoothed out gradually over time by the water’s force.

It strikes him then, how foolish he had been.

His students are no longer just his students anymore: they are his comrades, his allies, his friends. In the five years he was gone they have grown beyond expectations, beyond Byleth’s flimsy ideas of their future five years ago.

Perhaps they will grow even further, beyond this war, beyond the nation of Fódlan itself.

Byleth’s train of thought is cut off by shouting outside the tent: “Caspar! Caspar, no. let go of the stick.” He can hear screaming, and from the vocal cords guesses it to be either Lorenz or Ignatz. Faintly under the noise, Marianne whispers, “Oh dear.”

Resigning himself to trying to resolve whatever this band of misfits have gotten themselves into this time, he peers outside the tent, only to immediately regret it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


iv.

Falling in love with Linhardt is part of his routine. It is the easiest choice Byleth has ever made, ever makes, everyday.

Even now he is falling, watching Linhardt slumped beside him in the corner desk, using the stack of books in front of him as cover to sleep as Manuela teaches the class.

Ignatz’s paintings are hanging to dry on the edges of the room, mercifully hidden behind thin black sheets that flutter with the slightest movement. Byleth doesn’t know what he would do if he had to walk past portrait of him and Linhardt everyday.

Even now the feeling of Linhardt’s head nestled between his neck and shoulder is imprinted on Byleth’s body.

(He had only looked for a brief moment that day at what Ignatz had managed to capture. Ignatz had painted with their faces in the peachy pink of dawn, Linhardt peacefully asleep, Byleth looking over him with a gentleness he didn’t think he was capable of. He remembers determinedly trying not to think of anything in that glorious, torturously long time it took Ignatz to paint them, hands twitching, inches yet miles from Linhardt’s.

If Ignatz noticed anything, he said nothing afterward. But what he shows in his painting speaks for itself.)

He is distracted from Manuela’s lesson now by the rhythmic rise and fall of Linhardt’s back. His hair is messier than usual, woven into a loose braid that only looks half-finished. He would think Bernadetta or Marianne was the other who braided it, but their braids are neater (and he doesn't want to think of the implication this brings, of how he's been looking long enough to tell who did who's hair), and that can only mean Linhardt was the one who lazily braided it before falling asleep halfway, a thought that makes Byleth want to smile with fondness at the image this brings up.

(Byleth hasn’t been able to look away since that night, cannot find it in himself to try now.)

The light poring from the windows is a rich blue. Striking Linhardt’s hair, it turns a lighter shade of green-blue, and Byleth thinks of moonshine.

There’s something yellow peeking out of the book Linhardt has in his grasp. He’s curious, but he doesn’t want to wake him, so he settles for slowly pulling the book from his grip when Manuela’s turned away from their corner. He flips it open to a sight that would make his heart stop if his heart hadn’t stopped long ago.

It’s a pressed daffodil. The colours are drained from the stem and petals, leaving a pale yellow that is almost white on the ends. Yet it is not the colour that shocks him, but the flower itself.

(Dorothea was the one who suggested it one day. She always lingered in the greenhouse for a reason Byleth never asked about, because the reason was clear every time she reached the carnations with a forlorn expression on her face that Byleth knew all too well.

“You could give a flower to everyone,” she said, a mysterious twinkle in her eye. “Some people have favourites, of course, but do you know about flower language?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not something that’s used a lot, but you can essentially tell people how you feel about them based on the flower you give them.” With a wink, she pressed a book into his hands. “Think on it.”

The book was titled _The Secret Language of Flowers_. Byleth didn’t know what to do with it.

But when he looked up, Dorothea was already gone.)

He didn’t think Linhardt would keep the flower he gave him all those months ago. He gave it to him in a moment of weakness after the battle in the palace, on a whim, the burning knowledge that ached whenever he thought of the feelings he harbored, which was too often.

(His hands traced the shape of the trumpet-shaped flower on the page. _Daffodils_ , it read, _is for unrequited love._ )

Because there was no chance of Linhardt feeling anything remotely romantic toward Byleth. They were friends at best, like everyone else in the monastery Byleth had met.

Still, he didn’t think Linhardt would use the flower as a _bookmark_. Though maybe that means he doesn’t know the meaning behind the flower, Byleth thinks desperately. Has Dorothea noticed this? Has she said anything? If she had, would _Linhardt_ say anything? He doesn’t know. He never will, if he doesn’t ask.

He looks at Linhardt, asleep to the turbulence in Byleth’s mind.

No. No, he can’t ask.

He closes the book and looks forward, trying to distract himself with Manuela’s lecture for the rest of the lesson, ignoring the prickle of unease whenever he glances at Linhardt from the corner of his eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  


v.

Byleth isn’t sure how he got involved with this. He thinks the one to blame for this would be Seteth, and the fact that he isn’t here at all, gone for the night on a Church of Seiros mission.

“Was it Manuela who came up with this?” he says, exasperated at the sight that greets him in the dining hall.

Claude grins widely at him, tipsy but still functional as he dangles the half-filled bottle of wine in his hands. “Flayn, actually.”

He sighs. That makes perfect sense. “Are you all in...this state?” He waves a hand over Ignatz, sobbing in the corner, to Dorothea singing loudly, spinning a giggling Leonie as the others stumble along to whatever beat exists in their heads. Raphael and Hilda are having an arm-wrestling match, and Byleth doesn’t want to think about how that could happen or the glint in Hilda’s eyes.

“Why don’t you take a guess, teach.” Behind Claude, Marianne is patting Ignatz’s head, talking in the voice she uses for animals, and Byleth is relieved to discover that that voice wasn’t exclusively used on him because he was ill.

“Professor.” Claude lurches toward him unsteadily and Byleth would be more worried, but he’s holding up Linhardt on one side, who groans. “Can you take him to his room?”

“How much has he had?”

“Dunno!” Linhardt stinks of alcohol. Byleth wrinkles his nose, and readjusts his grip under Linhardt’s arm. “We were having a drinking contest against Lorenz, and obviously Linny won!” Byleth can tell with Lorenz lying on the ground a few feet away, down for the count.

Claude sends him a flimsy salute. “You can go, teach. I’ll be the one to...keep this party in check...Flayn! What did we say about trying to climb onto the chandelier!” He stomps away before Byleth’s forced to come up with a reply.

Byleth hauls Linhardt away before anything else distracts him.

The air from the pier is cold. There’s not a soul to be found, and Byleth can only assume that someone (Flayn? Hilda? Claude?) bribed the guards from surveilling this part of the monastery in their patrols tonight.

This wasn’t exactly what Byleth planned to do tonight. He simply wanted to take a walk around the grounds to clear his head from the work he had done that day.

(“Work? On a Saturday?” Sothis stuck out her tongue, making a ‘pffbt’ noise. “Talk about having no life.”

Byleth rolled his eyes and grabbed the next stack of papers to be graded. It was not his fault, after all, that Sothis was stuck in his body and that his life "was as boring as watching a tree grow from a tiny sapling." Her words.)

Instead, Linhardt’s breath is warm on his neck, and Byleth’s legs stutter down the stairs every time he so much as mumbles something against his ear.

_“Professorrrr,”_ Linhardt drawls, and Byleth misses a step.

He falls, and Linhardt follows.

The world is flipped upside down. It’s a cloudless velvet night sky. Only the moon and the stars are their witnesses as Linhardt moves slowly on top of Byleth and his mind tries to catch up, a million steps behind and stuck on Linhardt’s voice in that tone.

Linhardt blinks, gaze heavy and half-lidded, heady with alcohol. Byleth can only hope that he doesn’t remember this tomorrow, or perhaps ever.

“You’re so red, you look like a tomato.” Linhardt giggles, and Byleth burns in a way that finally kicks his brain into action.

He sits up, hands barely shaking as he grabs Linhardt’s elbows to help him up. Linhardt says nothing, only giving him a sloppy, lopsided grin that doesn’t help the flush on Byleth’s face.

“Do you remember,” Linhardt whispers conspiratorially, “the ball?”

The Garreg Mach Ball five years ago. Byleth remembers that night, only because of the amount of toes he stepped on and apologies he had to mutter to his partner that night as Sothis laughed at his suffering all the while. And yet every time the song ended and another started up, another student approached him, like they hadn’t just seen him almost send Hilda spinning into a table.

And of course, the Goddess Tower, where he found Linhardt - or, Linhardt found _him_ \- away from all the noise. Byleth can’t remember what happened, not exactly, but he remembers Linhardt offering, proposing to study his Crest, in the quiet of the night that made Byleth feel safe.

“I never got to dance with you that night,” Linhardt says. “You had quite a long lineup of students waiting. So professor, why don’t you humour me?”

Byleth was bracing himself for another question about his Crest, but instead Linhardt lifts his hand up within his own, and places his other on Byleth’s hip, like this was where he was meant to be all along.

By the time he realizes what’s happening, Linhardt is already stepping forward, and Byleth follows his lead. He looks down at his feet quickly, trying to remember the steps. In truth, it was Sothis who had remembered the steps for him that night and when he coached Flayn, but she is gone now, and so has his mental capacity to process things in this kind of setting.

Linhardt doesn’t say anything - like how Byleth should be looking up at his partner - but starts up a tune. He doesn’t recognize it from the ball, but he remembers it because sometimes Manuela or Dorothea will hum this tune, when they think no one is listening. Linhardt’s voice is nice, comparatively nicer than his own, and it lingers in the night air.

But he can’t keep a beat, and Byleth remembers why he chose Flayn to represent their house for the solo dance competition instead of Linhardt.

It doesn’t help matters that he’s drunk; he sways from side to side, following his whims, spinning Byleth when he isn’t expecting it, dipping him deep enough that Byleth’s grip on his hand is sweaty and tight, but Linhardt sweeps him back up and holds him close, close enough that his hair tickles Byleth’s forehead and neck.

And if every night could end like this, with them in each other’s arms, Byleth wouldn’t mind waking up and forcing himself out of bed to face tomorrow.

But Linhardt is drunk and Byleth is hopeless, and the only hope left in him is that Linhardt will forget this all come morning, that the memory of Byleth’s hand in his is replaced by a book (or perhaps a bucket, for the disaster that Byleth can see coming from a mile away).

So they stand there, swaying in inky blue shadows a few feet from Linhardt’s door. Linhardt has long given up proper ballroom dancing; he simply holds Byleth close, head resting in the crook of Byleth’s neck, lips inches from skin as he hums. Byleth doesn’t know where to put his hands, winds them in some semblance of calm around Linhardt’s middle.

(It is at times like these that he is grateful for his lack of a heartbeat, because it would surely be jackrabbiting now.)

Byleth can tell when Linhardt falls asleep, because his breathing deepens and his voice trails off. Byleth tightens his hold on his body as Linhardt collapses on top of him, and tries not to think about how this will be the last time he’ll ever be this close to him, that the scent of sweat and alcohol and _Linhardt_ will linger on him afterward.

Instead, he hauls him up and kicks open his dorm room.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The swaying of the boat is what wakes him.

Sunlight pierces through closed eyelids, and Byleth opens them to see Linhardt staring back at him, eyes inquisitive and a quirk to his lips that makes Byleth want to lean forward and kiss him.

(He knows now that Linhardt has been watching him for a long time, probably even before Byleth was forcing himself to look away.)

Linhardt is the one who moves first, claiming Byleth’s lips for his own. Byleth breathes in his existence, never so glad to be alive. He plays with the end of the french braid Linhardt’s hair is in today, one that Byleth weaved himself after weeks of following along to Marianne and Bernadetta’s lessons, hands clumsy in Linhardt’s hair where they so easily cut through flesh. Linhardt smells of spring gone ancient, sweet and light on his tongue but with the muted smell of parchment and ink, and colours explode behind Byleth’s eyes, bursts of oranges and pinks and greens.

Linhardt breaks apart from the kiss to stay there, foreheads resting against each other. His eyelashes brush Byleth’s cheeks; butterfly kisses. Linhardt is undoubtedly alive, in the pulse underneath Byleth’s hand, the breath they share.

“You know,” Linhardt murmurs, mouth inches from Byleth’s own. “We’ve been together for a month now, but I haven’t heard you say ‘I love you’.”

Byleth breaks apart only to stare at him. The view widens, and over their boat of makeshift pillows and blankets he sees shimmering water. In the distance he spots the pier and the greenhouse, the small shack setup for fishing.

“I thought I did.” He wracks his brain for any moment he could have said it, but he draws a blank.

Linhardt nuzzles against his shoulder. “Hm. No. You never were one for using your words, though.”

“You’re not wrong. But...” Byleth presses a kiss into Linhardt’s neck, who breaks away, laughing. “I love you the way Bernadetta loves writing. I love you the way Raphael loves food.” With each declaration, he lands another kiss on Linhardt. “I love you the way Ignatz loves art and Dorothea still loves opera, undoubtedly.” Byleth didn’t think it was possible to hold the world in your hands, but that was before he cupped his hands under Linhardt’s head and realized that a world without Linhardt von Hevring is no world at all. “I love you.”

“You,” Linhardt boops him on the nose, “are incredibly sappy. Now, close your eyes.”

Byleth does. In the darkness, the rocking of the boat beneath them, Linhardt’s fingers brush his hair back, tucking something behind Byleth’s ear before he moves, hands on his collarbone, leaving a tingling trail of warmth behind. Byleth has never been so thankful for his decision to wear a shirt in that moment.

(And there is life, too, for Byleth beyond way, beyond the armour he dons and the blood he’s shed.)

“You can open them now.”

Linhardt smiles as Byleth reaches back to pull a flower from behind his ear.

The outer petals are a dark, butterscotch yellow. Ringing the golden center is a burnt orange. A flower Byleth has only seen in a book, painted between the pages with a careful hand.

“Do you know what ambrosia flowers mean?” Linhardt looks at him like he already knows he does, and Byleth knows he must.

“How long did you know?” Byleth says. “About the daffodil.”

“A few weeks ago. I kept seeing that book on your desk...” _The Secret Language of Flowers_. “And I grew curious enough to conduct my own research. That’s when I realized. And I didn’t want to leave you hanging.”

“Are you sure that I’m the sappy one between us two?”

Linhardt hums in mock thought. His nose wrinkles cutely when Byleth plants a kiss on it. “No, I think that’s you.”

“You make it easy.”

“And you make it easy to love you.”

“I thought you said I was supposed to be the sappy one?”

“Which you are. Now,” Linhardt brandishes one of the pillows. “Help me. I want to see if we can make a pillow fort on this boat.”

If this is how the rest of Byleth’s days will be spent, he hopes to live forever with Linhardt.

  
  
  


( _Ambrosia_ , he read, the name rolling through his head as he tasted it on the tip of his tongue, _means reciprocated love._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Edit 1/5/2020: we got [fanart!](https://twitter.com/aegisunmerge/status/1213719779468550144?s=20%E2%80%9D>fanart!</a>%20<a%20href=)


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